


Ten Drops

by ossapher



Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: M/M, Polyamorous Character, hurt/ comfort, imminent Gay Trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He lay on a narrow cot, leg propped up and swathed in bandages, and for a moment Laurens thought he was asleep. The aide made to creep back out the way he came, but Lafayette stirred and said, 'Laurens, is that you? Please, stay.'"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Drops

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place the day after Brandywine. Polyamorous Hamilton, established Lams, imminent Gay Trio. Warnings for injury (Lafayette was shot yesterday), emotional trauma (lots of other people got shot as well), and technically drug use (laudanum).

Washington was away visiting the other wounded men, and the physician had likewise left, so it was Lafayette alone in the tent when Laurens came to see him. He lay on a narrow cot, leg propped up and swathed in bandages, and for a moment Laurens thought he was asleep. The aide made to creep back out the way he came, but Lafayette stirred and said, “Laurens, is that you? Please, stay.”

“Are you sure? If you need rest I can–”

“Pah, I feel like I have been resting for hours. Are you well?” Lafayette’s accent was thicker than usual; doubtless he was still half-asleep.

Laurens chuckled. “I dare say I do better than you, my dear fellow. Rumor has it you led a retreat with a bullet in your leg?”

“Well, I didn’t notice so much at the time,” Lafayette shrugged. A pink flush came to his otherwise pale face, betraying that, despite his pretended nonchalance, he was quite proud of himself. And why should be not be? Brandywine had been his first major engagement, and all the reports said he had acquitted himself admirably. Laurens had wondered, privately of course, if the youthful Frenchman’s zeal for liberty and glory off the field of battle could be equaled on it, but it seemed his actions had suited his words perfectly, and to his great credit.

“The men are all talking about it,” Laurens said. “They are asking after your health. May I tell them you are well?” It was true: there had been heavy fighting, and many of the men around Lafayette had been wounded or killed. He could not help but notice Lafayette’s unhealthy pallor under his pleased flush; that despite clearly being interested in their conversation he was conducting it from flat on his back in bed; that his hands, usually animated, lay still upon the sheet.

“Nothing a few days rest and a new boot won’t cure. My other one filled up with blood and they had to tip it out like a bucket, ha! But wasn’t until they took it off me that I felt any ill-effect.”

“The bones were not touched, then?”

“No, praise God. I am told I was very fortunate.”

“And you are not in much pain?”

“Eh, it is not so bad. The doctor gave me something a few hours ago, when I first came in. I forget the name.”

“Laudanum? Yes, that is powerful stuff.” Laurens peered closer at the marquis’ face. His irises were thin pale rings around big black pupils. The doctor must have given him quite the dose, if it was not yet out of his system.

And something else Lafayette had said bothered him. “Surely you did not come in only a few hours ago. The battle was yesterday morning!”

Lafayette’s eyes went wide. “Good Lord, I have slept a day and a night!” He managed to sit up, panting, face going white under his freckles.

Laurens hurried over, pushing him gently back to the cot. “Washington wanted you to rest, my dear fellow. As you said, you lost plenty of blood, and there is no call at all for you to exert yourself. I merely came to see how you fared, and to fetch anything you might need. Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

“I could do with something to drink, if you do not mind. But I am sure that the doctor–”

“The doctor has been amputating and operating left and right. I believe he has fallen asleep in the hospital tent. Please, allow me. It is no trouble at all.”

Laurens returned a moment later with the promised water. Hamilton followed with his and Laurens’ work for the day, dispatches and paper and ink; Laurens had fetched him, gland to have company in a foreign situation. Hamilton, too, projected an air of self-assurance that Laurens thought Lafayette might find comforting.

“Nothing worse than being ill by yourself,” Hamilton grinned, in response to Lafayette’s quizzical look as he spread the papers out over a desk. “We’ll keep you company if you like.”

"I would like, yes,” Lafayette said, with a smile of heartwarming and genuine gratitude. That was another good quality in the man, Laurens thought: there was not a false note in him. When Laurens had been told a French aristocrat had gotten a commission in the army he had initially recoiled at the idea, knowing from his experience in Europe that they tended to fall into the categories of dissolute rake or self-promoting glory hound, and while Lafayette may have shared some characteristics with the latter group, no-one who met him could doubt the utter sincerity of his pledge to the cause of liberty.

Laurens realized quite suddenly that they and Washington were the nearest thing to a family the marquis had in practically the whole hemisphere.  He gave the man’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, then levered him upright for a cup of water.

"That is much better, I thank you,” Lafayette said, when they were done, but he grimaced as Laurens lowered him back down.

“Is the leg hurting you?” Hamilton asked, a little sharply. “You must tell us these things, you know. Suffering is no use when we have laudanum to hand.”

Lafayette gave a wry grin. “I am Catholic, sir. We are champion martyrs, and we take suffering in stride, if we can walk.” At Hamilton’s continued mock- stern glare, he yielded. “Fine. I will admit, it hurts like a—what is the expression? Like a pup of a bitch?”

Laurens and Hamilton, unable to help themselves, both burst out laughing, and Lafayette joined in too once the proper expression was explained to him. But Laurens was soon serious. “Should we call the doctor? What if it grows infected?”

“I do not think it is infected; the dear marquis does not appear feverish,” Hamilton mused. “Do you mind?”

At Lafayette’s assent, Hamilton laid a light hand over the bandages that swathed his elevated calf. “The wound is not warm to the touch.” He knelt by the marquis and felt his forehead and face, gently brushing back his hair, showing its natural strawberry-blonde with the powder completely gone. “I don’t believe he has a temperature, either. How do you feel, Gilbert?”

“Fine,” the marquis breathed. During Hamilton’s impromptu examination he had closed his eyes, and now he opened them as Hamilton walked over to the vial of laudanum, left on the side of the desk along with a note from the doctor regarding the proper dosage.

"Ten drops should do it,” he said, after reading the note. Taking a bottle of weak wine from next to the laudanum, he poured out half a cup, then added the drops one by one, swirling them together when he was done. “There.”

With Laurens helping him sit upright Lafayette downed the liquid. After making sure he wanted for nothing else, Hamilton and Laurens kept up a soft background chatter about the battle as they worked. Presently they were interrupted by a groan from the marquis.

"Are you well, Gilbert?” Hamilton said, starting up in alarm.

Lafayette blinked in bafflement once or twice before slurring in French,“Ach, my head is all a muddle, forgive me.” In English, the laudanum had brought out his French accent; in French, his nasal, proper Parisien accent flattened out and regained some of its lost vowels. “I just remembered—I must write Adrienne this instant. If she hears I’ve been shot second-hand she’ll think I’m dead—“

He moved to get out of bed, forgetting his leg, but Laurens seized both shoulders and held him down while Hamilton caught foot and knee and thereby managed to prevent further injury. Being uncoordinated from laudanum and weak from blood loss he was easy to subdue, especially once Hamilton, also switching to French, said, "Brother, you cannot hope to write coherently or legibly in your current state. Dictate us a letter and we will have it sent out with the next post. Adrienne will have no cause to fret.”

“Yes, yes, that is sensible,” Lafayette said, half-distracted. Laurens still had both arms around his shoulders; he could feel his heart pounding at the tempo of a brisk march. “I only miss her,” the marquis said, miserably. “I wish she were here to hold me. God, they had to wash a man’s brains out of my hair when I came in. And the blood, God, everywhere, and my ears ringing and everything tunneling down to a pinpoint…” The laudanum may have calmed his pain, but it also weakened his self-control, and yesterday’s horrifying experiences came bubbling to the surface. Laurens could well imagine the combination of loneliness, sorrow, horror, and heartache that made him weep.

In Laurens’ experience men often cried after a battle, and it certainly did not make him think less of them, but that did not mean he knew how to express the wrenching sympathy in his heart, and he was deeply embarrassed to be seeing the other man so distressed. He looked to Hamilton for help, but for once he seemed at a loss for what to do. Laurens only wrapped his arms around Lafayette into something less like a restraining hold and more like an embrace. “Shh, shh,” he whispered, rubbing an arm up and down his back. “You’re safe. It’s over, it’s over.”

The cot sagged a little as Hamilton seated himself on the other side. He took one of Lafayette’s hands in his, and Laurens saw the marquis grab hold until his knuckles went white.

The laudanum continued to take rapid effect; within another few minutes the marquis’ hold on Hamilton’s hand had gone nearly slack, his breathing regular in Laurens’ arms. Laurens settled him back on the cot, dabbing the tears from his face with his handkerchief. Hamilton folded his hand gently across his chest, looking, Laurens thought, quite destroyed. Laurens, meaning to reassure Hamilton a little now that Lafayette was asleep, took his hand.

"I saw you kissing the other day,” Lafayette slurred, eyes half-closed, barely comprehensible.

Hamilton and Laurens exchanged a panicked glance. They had thought themselves unobserved.

“It’s all right,” Lafayette continued, not ruffled in the least. “They’re such prudes about it here. I only thought perhaps I would ask to join you sometime.”

A second glance between the two aides, this one of an entirely different nature. Hamilton was the first to recover. “Why, I suppose if once you are recovered you find yourself still so inclined, we–” He stopped: Lafayette’s head had dropped to one side, his eyes shut. “Yes, by all means, sleep, you magnificent fool, and in the meantime you have given me six kinds of heart palpitations.” He clutched at his chest: a ridiculous gesture, in a man of twenty, and yet Laurens understood the sentiment perfectly.

Laurens gave Hamilton a squeeze on the shoulder. “Palpitations aside, I am not opposed to the idea, assuming it is not the laudanum talking. Men say things entirely against their usual inclinations under the influence of drugs much less potent, and he does seem awfully attached to Adrienne. The logistics, I admit, I have not considered…”

“Ah,” Hamilton smirked, “but we are close, and she is far away, and he must work with what he’s got. Anyway, I have always found the idea that you can only love one person at a time to be a perfectly ignorant, ill-formed notion, more rooted in antiquated considerations on property inheritance than a good understanding of the human heart. As for the logistics, well, if it comes to that, I am sure we can arrange something to our mutual satisfaction.”

He bent to kiss the sleeping Lafayette on the forehead, and he and Laurens returned to their work.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ten Drops (the remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6454231) by [ossapher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher)




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